Frum N' Flipping

They fascinated me. They lived beside us, but in a system entirely apart. Talking to them would cast me into a state of mortal sin, but I badly wanted to hear how yeshiva boys lived, and talked, and thought. I wanted to hear what went in within the hallowed halls where my feet could never tread. I gathered up crumbs of information, snippets of conversations. And I wondered. Fast forward ten years, out of high school and into Shidduchim. Yeshiva boys are coming out of my ears. Can this be God's repayment for my once secret interest? "You want to hear what it's like in Yeshiva, do you? You'll hear what it's like in a hundred Yeshivas!" For I am now an expert on Yeshivas. A Chareidi colleague discusses where to send his son to Yeshiva. I inundate him with a wealth of information; I tell him the pros and cons of each institution, the type of boys who go there, the families they come from, the staff's approach to Chinuch, and the comfort level of the fo...

I almost missed the message. Then I noticed the little envelope in the corner of my cell phone's screen. "I'm engaged!!!" the SMS shrieks out at me. She asks me to give the news to her high school teacher, who happens to be a relative of mine. That night I make the call. It starts off pretty typically. "Guess what? Rachel is engaged!" "Mazal tov! That's so exciting!" I can hear the genuine pleasure in her voice. Rachel is one of her favorite students. "Tell me all about it? Who's the boy?" "Well, he's in the army." Silence. I take a deep breath, and plow on. "He's an officer. Something quite high up. I don't remember the initials, 'samech' something or other." "I see." "It's such a cute story how the Shidduch was made. See she didn't think it would work out, but she thought 'why not', and gave it a try, and voila!' Frozen replies from the other side of the...